Chef cleared of ‘too drunk to consent’ rape

A chef was today cleared of raping a solicitor who claimed she was too drunk to consent to sex.

Peter Bacon, 26, was accused of attacking the woman after a night of heavy drinking in February last year at her house in Kent.

But he was cleared by a jury of four men and seven women today after they deliberated for just 45 minutes.

Mr Bacon smiled and said thank you to the jury at Winchester Crown Court after hearing the verdict.

Mr Bacon’s solicitor Nicola O’Connor said afterwards: “This case seriously called into question the lack of anonymity for people like Peter who have been wrongfully accused of rape and ultimately are acquitted.

“There are no winners in this case. Peter has had this awful allegation hanging over his head for just over a year now.

The prosecution claimed that the woman was so drunk she was incapable of giving Bacon consent to the sex and he took advantage.

But Bacon told the court that the woman, who is in her 40s, had given him the “come-on” and consented and had taken part in the sex.

Earlier, the jury heard that Bacon, from Pilgrims Way, Canterbury, Kent, had gone to the woman’s house for drinks after a friend already there called him to come over.

He said he had met the woman twice before that night and she had always been drunk.

About five bottles of wine were consumed by the three in the house over the evening before the friend left – leaving Bacon and the woman alone.

Bacon told police: “I thought she gave me the come-on – the body and eye contact was there and she did not give me the brush-off.”

He said the pair started kissing and then went upstairs to her bedroom where she got into bed with her clothes on.

Bacon said he got in and she did not stop him helping her take her jumper, bra, tracksuit bottoms and underwear off before they performed sex acts on each other and had unprotected intercourse in two positions.

The chef said he thought that the woman had enjoyed the sex.

“She groaned,” he said. “I’m not saying she had the time of her life, but she was there,” he told the police. “She gave the impression she was enjoying it.”

But then in the morning he told officers everything was different.

“I woke up and gently kissed her on the back of the neck. She asked, ‘did we have sex?’. I said, ‘yes’, and she started shouting rape.”

“She said, ‘the law has been changed for f like you, if you are too drunk to give consent it’s rape’, or something along those lines’,” he told the jury.

Bacon said he was shocked and scared and he grabbed his clothes, leaving behind his socks, and ran out of the house while the woman, now sobbing, told him to “get out”.

He said he then called 999 to report what had happened, before going to a police station.

Blood samples taken from her showed the woman would have been at least twice the drink-drive limit at the time with memory loss and loss of inhibitions likely to have taken place.

Earlier, the woman had told the jury that she would not have given consent to sex.

“I was too drunk to consent to anything,” she said.

In final prosecution arguments, Kerry Malin told the jury that Bacon “took advantage of a drunk woman in bed with her clothes on”.

She said: “He turned up and could see a woman in drink and it was too good an opportunity to miss.”

But Judith Khan, defending, said that there was no evidence that the woman had given consent or not, and that drunken consent is still consent.

She asked the jury: “How on earth can you be sure of guilt on the account of someone who cannot help one way or the other?”

Summing up, Judge Patrick Hooton said that the woman’s comment that she could not give consent because she was drunk was “completely wrong”.